Terms and Conditions May Apply

This documentary and cautionary tale will make you re-examine the way internet users willingly forfeit their privacy, intellectual property, and other civil freedoms everyday on Google, Facebook, and other free web services.

If you have ever used the internet, email, a smart phone, iTunes, Google, Facebook, or almost any computer program, then odds are you have blindly agreed to a "terms and conditions" agreement. Director Cullen Hoback takes a microscope to these labyrinthine contracts of rules and concessions, uncovering an epidemic of nearly invisible data mining, which allows multinational corporations and government agencies nearly unlimited access to our personal information. Conferring with lawyers, consumer advocates, senators, and software engineers, Hoback takes us on what starts as an affable exploration that turns Orwellian as he discovers frightening examples of the slow, voluntary erosion of our privacy. A comedian finds a SWAT team at his door after quoting Fight Club on Facebook. A tourist cheekily tweets about a weekend of drinking, and then finds himself detained for suspected terrorist activities. As legislation like the Patriot Act continues to expand the level of surveillance that is allowed, usually under full cooperation of the corporations to whom we willingly share information, is there any hope for the future of privacy? This provocative, insightful, and unnerving documentary doesn't have the answers, but will make you think more carefully before clicking "I accept."

Director BiographyCullen Hoback grew up on the outskirts of Los Angeles. When he was 17, he started his own public access late night TV show, but was kicked off the air after making a series of social statements that drew angry phone calls from locals. Trying to bring light to strange and unfamiliar topics became a common theme for Hoback, as evidenced in previous films such as the LARPing documentary Monster Camp (2007) and the high school genre hybrid Friction (2010).

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